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Jan 29, 2024 · ECO 4 is great, but beware! Anyone else is this same position? Anyone resolved the issues? Last April (2023) I did some research on the ECO4 scheme, via my Local Council website. I selected a company, based on the location and also the relevant certifications required (MCS, TrustMark) and started the process.
Mar 11, 2022 · I don’t see any evidence that they are a scam. You can use the form provided by moneysavingexpert to claim yourself if you think you were miss sold or if the finance broker did not explain their commission.
Jul 26, 2024 · Search the FCA Warning List to find details of unauthorised firms and individuals that aren’t allowed to operate in the UK.
- By Anne R. Allen
- Phishing Scammers Are Stealing Manuscripts
- How to Stay Safe
- Never Pay An Agent An Upfront fee.
- Real Publishers Don’T Make Offers on Books They Haven’T Read.
- Traditional Publishers Aren’T Paid by Authors; Authors Are Paid by publishers.
- Million-Dollar Advances Mostly Go to A-List Celebrities
- Agents Rarely Solicit Unpublished Authors
- Book Review Scams Are Everywhere
- Beware Junk Marketing Packages
2020 was a terrible year in so many ways. But one group seems to have thrived: the scammer community. Publishing scammers are everywhere now. I hear about new ones every week, each more heartbreaking than the one before. And more outrageous.
Yes. This is happening. It’s a bizarre and complicated scam targeting traditionally published authors, often famous ones. But unknowns have been hit too. Authors will get an email that appears to be from their agent or editor, asking for the latest draft of the WIP. But it’s not from the agent. It’s from a scammer. The unsuspecting author doesn’t k...
Plenty of scammers show up in my own inbox. I usually know enough to send them directly to spam, but I know some writers will be caught by them. And it only takes a few successful hits to keep these crooks going. Here are some basic things you need to know to stay safe. And so does your sweet next door neighbor who’s got a half-finished memoir and ...
I thought fee-charging scam agents disappeared a decade ago, but they’re ba-a-a-ck. The old-school scammers set up “agencies” that either charged reading fees and “copying and postage” fees, or they had cozy relationships with “editing” companies and demanded the author pay a hefty fee for a bad edit. The contemporary scammers are much bolder. They...
If the only reason a company contacts you is that you put the word “writer” in your profile, then be prepared to meet a publishing scammer. I saw a sad little post on Facebook a few months ago from an author who was over the moon because a publisher had approached her saying they were interested in “her book.” She was surprised they didn’t know it ...
Yes. We live in the age of self-publishing and “hybrid publishing.” Unfortunately, a lot of iffy presses pose as “self-publishing assistants” or “hybrid publishers” when they’re just overpriced vanity publishers. There are some very good companies that offer self-publishing services. Companies like BookBaby and Lulu offer excellent formatters and d...
If anybody approaches you with promises of an advance with more than three zeros after it, do some serious investigating. Especially if you don’t have an agent. Memoirs especially don’t tend to sell in large numbers, so unless your book is a high-concept novel or a biography of a major celebrity, be very wary. Some of these scammers are promising u...
Yes, I do know of authors who have been solicited by legit agents, but they were journalists or well-known short story or essay writers who were multi-published in venues other than books. They were not newbies. Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware warned us in December about one of the current scams that snags the dewy-eyed newbies. They approach a w...
Authors are obsessed with book reviews, especially on Amazon. That’s probably why solicitations by paid book review services are the most common scams I find in my inbox. Most of the contemporary scammers have the sense not to promise Amazon reviews any more, because Amazon now has fierce penaltiesfor paid reader reviews. (Paid and exchanged review...
These have been around for at least a decade, and they’re still going strong. (Edit 2/5/21: a reader recently reported a nasty junk marketing company called Book Writing Hub. Our reader paid over $5000 for “marketing” that was not only junk, but nearly non-existent.) There was a time when Tweeting your book title might grab the attention of a possi...
Jan 26, 2022 · Bogus emails are directing potential victims to a fraudulent website that misuses our logo. Find out what a genuine email from Which? contains.
Aug 13, 2020 · Scammers–the same Philippines-based Author Solutions copycats that I’ve featured numerous times in this blog (also see the long, long list in the sidebar)–are impersonating reputable literary agents and agencies in order to bamboozle writers into buying worthless “services.”
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1. Double-check the website's address. 2. Is the offer too good to be true? 3. Never pay by bank transfer. 4. Browse the website. 6. Check the fine print. 7. Read online reviews. 8. Can you trust a trust mark? 9. Look for a padlock. It can be difficult to spot a fake, fraudulent or scam website.
